


Your Memories Aren’t Your Destiny

by Pixeled



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Cancer, Death, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Redemption, Vincent’s childhood, absent father
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25090813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixeled/pseuds/Pixeled
Summary: If you asked Vincent what his favorite memory was, he could describe it in great detail.
Relationships: Grimoire Valentine/Vincent Valentine's Mother
Kudos: 6





	Your Memories Aren’t Your Destiny

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Valentined](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valentined/gifts).



> I wrote this to Nathan Wagner’s “Innocence”. I cried the whole time I wrote this. You’re welcome, V.
> 
> There is a melding of mine and V’s headcanons in here. Like her headcanon that Hellmasker was always with Vincent and he had schizophrenia and was committed for a time. 
> 
> The picture included is a drawing I did of what I think Vincent’s mother looked like. I believe she was Wutain and I will go down with the Vincent is half Wutain ship.

If you asked Vincent what his favorite memory was, he could describe it in great detail.

He was in his father’s arms. Grimoire pressed his finger to his son’s nose and smiled.

Just ahead, his mother stood, almost engulfed by the Junon Estate’s topiary, her head cocked to the side, long black hair fanning out like an ebony waterfall, the sun caught in it, arms wide open to receive him.

In his memory, it happened in slow motion. His father’s smile lasted forever. He was happy. He was happy _because_ Vincent was there. Because they were all _whole_. Because they were _all_ happy.

Finally, Grimoire set him down and Vincent ran for what seemed like forever. His mother gave him a sly smile and turned around, running in the topiary, but slow, to make sure he could catch up with his small legs.

The animals all passed him.

He could hear Grimoire laughing behind him, chasing after to make sure he didn’t fall.

The bunny, the bear, the pig, the chocobo, the cactuar, the cat, the dog, the bull—they all passed overhead like giant silent guardians.

Finally he broke free from the topiary and his mother was amongst the rose bush Grimoire specifically planted for her. She held her arms out again and he ran to her. She scooped him up and swung him in a circle, her dark eyes reflecting the radiance of the summer sun.

Grimoire hugged them both, Vincent trapped between, content.

But things weren’t whole for long.

They returned to Midgar, where his father worked.

For the first time, he saw his father cry when his mother died. He drank a lot and smashed a glass, didn’t bother to clean it up until the next day. Vincent jumped, his eyes wide, afraid of his father for the first time.

He didn’t know his father anymore. Perhaps he never did. Perhaps his mother was the only light in his father’s life, the only thing that tied them all together.

There were two times in his life where Grimoire turned his back on him. The first time was when he had him committed to the psychiatric hospital. That happened in slow motion too.

“Wait!” He had cried. “Mother talks to me sometimes! It’s not all bad!”

Grimoire had hesitated, but he still turned his back on him and walked away as the men in stark white hauled him inside. His father’s shoes on the ground walking away sounded thunderous.

“Please!” he screamed, but Grimoire didn’t turn around.

When he slid to the floor in his equally stark white room which occupied a single bed and a high window which overlooked a brick wall, she came to him. She touched his cheek and came close to kiss his forehead gently.

“Be brave, my baby boy,” she whispered. And then she was gone, the lifestream swallowing her. The luminous green lasted forever.

After that it was much worse. The voices found him under the bed, against the wall, in the chair they strapped his arms and legs to, in the deep sleep they put him in with medication. He began to spit out all the pills because they put him in a deep trance but the voices still came and he had no defense, hid them under the mattress. They found them all, spilling to the floor like little trinkets, so they started giving him needles, and that he couldn’t fight against, because he wasn’t strong enough and they were many.

The doctor shifted shape in front of his very eyes. It was _him._ The cracked mask and the twin bright eyes. The way he moved like he didn’t have bones.

He screamed and screamed until they put him under, but even there, those eyes haunted him.

There was no escape.

He reached out to his mother but she was gone. She wouldn’t come back.

The doctor asked him questions, but he didn’t trust him because he was _him_ , so he didn’t answer.

Months later, they let him go back to his father.

There was nothing they could do short of a lobotomy, they said, and Grimoire was so offended by even the suggestion of that kind of barbaric operation that he yelled in their faces. He took Vincent home, but things were all wrong.

Grimoire sent him away to school in Junon, hoping that structure would do him good, but Vincent didn’t _belong_.

The voices and the visions only got worse. The only way to white them out was violence.

The second time Grimoire walked away from him was when Veld took him away from a life of prison for murdering someone in his class. He had been so blind with rage four ShinRa troopers had to pull him off the boy. He had caved the boy’s skull in. Blood was spattered on his face, on his pristine white shirt with the skinny plaid tie, on his knuckles, on his knees where the plaid shorts ended, and his eyes were wild like an animal’s. There was a crowd of students screaming and yelling and talking over each other.

“He killed him for no reason!” one of his classmates told a ShinRa trooper.

“He said he was insane!” another said.

“He was muttering to himself and Jack started pushing at him and calling him a psycho!”

Veld led him away.

After Vincent became a Turk Grimoire was no longer in his life. He had turned his back on him forever.

Years later, Veld turned his back on Vincent, too.

Then Lucrecia, after he had died for her.

Everyone turned their backs on him. He was used to it. He never let anyone close again, no matter how lonely he became.

After he was dead, the voices in his head competed, but Hellmasker, which is what he called the first one from his childhood, was silent in comparison to the others, as if he knew he had a backseat role now.

And nothing scared Vincent any longer after what he’d been through in the laboratory in Nibelheim, deep below the creaking stairs in the basement.

In his coffin he could sleep and think of what life might have been like if his mother had survived, if the cancer hadn’t ravaged her beauty and her mind. He could think of what it might have been like if no one had walked away from him, if no one had lost faith, if he wasn’t worthless.

But the nightmares ravaged his mind worse than any cancer.

He wasn’t who he had been any longer.

He was a monster.

The darkness had taken him.

His foolishness was the only thing left. The wicked things inside his heart.

But he left his coffin eventually. Finally he had a purpose. Sins to absolve. And though he was like a stone lost in time, rushing water always dislodged stones eventually and polished them along the way, no matter their heaviness.

Many years later, when the world was very different, but the Junon estate was kept much the same, he returned there.

He walked through the topiary. The animals seemed much smaller as an adult, as all things seem much bigger as a child.

He saw her there, pressing a finger to her lips, and running through the winding path. Her hair, black as a raven’s wing, fanned out like a beautiful tapestry. When he caught up with her she was at the edge of the garden. There was a space between them that seemed limitless.

“Mother,” Vincent whispered, “won’t you make me whole?”

“Don’t let the darkness take you,” she said. “Listen to the light. I’ll cleanse your soul.”

“Mother, I’m broken inside. If you’d only see the wicked things inside,” Vincent said, swallowing hard.

“I’m not afraid. I won’t run.”

“Do I deserve all the pain?” Vincent whispered.

“Remember, your memories aren’t your destiny. Darling, won’t you let it go? You don’t have to let it hold you, your anger. You were built for so much more. Listen to light. Listen to the light.”

He stepped forward, but a ribbon of green already took her, and she faded slowly away. He ran to her, but by the time he fell to his knees, the lifestream had already faded.

He sobbed quietly on the ground. It had been a long time since he cried. He knew he would never see her again, but he felt lighter somehow.

All the fear, hatred, pain, and feelings of worthlessness seemed so much farther away now.

The voices were quiet.

For once, as the night descended, he heard the cicadas, and nothing but the cicadas. His mind was blissfully blank.

And although the darkness wrapped around him, it did not take him. He looked up at the stars and saw a shooting star. He smiled, then he got up and walked back through the topiary, blissfully whole.


End file.
